The cret life of geisha
(BBC)
For400years they have existed,timeless in a changing world.Once the playthings of shogun,the favourites of samurai.Their aled lips have kept silent,as Japan has changed more than any nation on earth.They cheered their Kamikaze heroes and then,became the sweethearts of American GIS.Geisha have endured in a world sheltered behind the walls of crecy and discretion.But finally the veil hiding the Geisha has lifted and we enter their forbidden world.Japan is one of the most advanced countries on earth.Technology is its obssion.The nation’s pursuit of efficiency creates rapid change.Yet for centuries the Japane have sheltered an extraordinary tradition-Geisha.The Geisha are the delicate guardians of ancient customs.An honorable past living in the prent.Their world is clod to the public. They live shrouded in crecy and steeped in ritual.They move in a storybook land of perfumed gardens and ornate temples but make their living in dark back streets and hidden tea hous.American writer Arthur Golden fell under the spell of this mysterious tradition.He spent ten years rearching his novel”Memoirs of a Geisha”which would become an international bestller.
针的成语Arthur Golden:It fascinated me,what I learned.It is so clod to outsiders.They really don’t like people coming in and poking around and learning their crets.
Arthur Golden had to break the al of silence surrounding the geisha world.He faced a near impossible task,something like entering a clod religious order.
孕妇喝什么汤Arthur Golden:Before I began this rearch if you asked me what a geisha was I’m sure I would have told you what every American would have except that I knew at least that their not
strictly prostitutes that it wasn’t quite that simple but I certainly didn’t understand the
role they played or why they played it and I’ve come to e the way that geisha figure
into Japane society as being something quite unique.
Exotic and alluring,geisha live in a world where refinement and grace are everything,yet love is scorned as illusion.A perfect surface is what matters.
Locked away from everyday life,geisha are the prerve of a lect elite.The ultimate expression of prestige and status.For most,it is a rarity even to catch a glimp of a geisha.They have become rev
ered and celebrated symbols of Japan.In Kyoto,the ancient capital,an annual event celebrates Japan’s most honored traditions,including the geisha.The Cherry Blossom Festival is a rare and much anticipated chance for the public to gaze upon the most private tradition of all.The geisha are on display,wrapped in all their silk finery,women who are emblems of both history and nsuality.But behind their painted faces and delicate smiles is a difficult and intricate way of life.
The geisha hou is the temple of this ancient art.For centuries the geisha have witnesd the love
betrayals and deceptions of Japan’s most powerful men.
Arthur Golden:A geisha is a woman who’s available for hire to keep a man company during the evening,usually in fact it’s a group of men company during the evening and to the
surpri of most Westerners that rarely involves x,it simply doesn’t exist in other
cultures becau we socialize together the Japane don’t,this is where Geisha come in. They guarantee their clients total privacy,under a code of silence.
Arthur Golden:A man who goes to a geisha hou in the evening goes there on the assumption that nothings that’s said or done will be taken outside tho walls,this a particular
compartment,its water tight and this is what allows the geisha districts to exist really,
and this is why there’s a kind of code of silence a geisha mustn’t talk about what has
happened.
形容书的成语The geisha business is the only business in Japan run exclusively by women for men.At the top is the geisha mother.She provides all her girls with board and lodging,and the precious kimonos,a considerable outlay.In return,apart from a modest wage,the geisha give her all the money they earn form their clients.
At one time,a geisha mother virtually owned her girls.They lived constantly in her debt.The geisha mother would begin recouping her investment by lling a girl’s virginity to the highest bidder.This discreet auction relied on her vast knowledge of the private lives and desires of her local clients.
Arthur Golden:It’s true that the stereotypical image of the women who run the hous,the Geisha hous,is of sort of Cruella Deville like character who cares only about one thing and
that’s money.But I think the stereotype evolved becau there is a considerable amount
of truth in it.The districts,the striking thing about then is that they’re the one area in
Japan where women absolutely rule.
Today,it is in the best interests of a geisha mother to treat her girls well.It costs her no less than500,000 dollars to train a geisha.And if the geisha simply quits,the geisha mother los a fortune.Apprentice geisha go through five years of training.By the end,even their gestures are distinctive.Every aspect of their appearance has acquired a symbolic meaning-and an erotic power.Yuiko is an apprentice geisha, half way through her five year training.The most valuable person in her life is her older geisha sister, Mameka.All trainee geisha have an elder sister to teach them the centuries old skills they need to succeed.
Mameka,Yuiko’s older geisha sister,lives the life of a super model.She can afford the very best
including a million dollar membership to a country club and private coaching lessons.
M ameka:Thanks to this job I get to meet many people,eat good food,wear nice Kimono and travel to places where ordinary people can’t go.In a word,I get to do many enjoyable things in life. Mameka ts a high standard.To follow her example Yuiko has to dedicate her life to the art.The word geisha means artist.As well as being professional companions,a geisha must excel in dance,music and literature.Every graceful movement is carefully choreographed.The dances often tell stories about G
eisha who must sacrifice love for their art.A geisha requires the same dedication that a prima ballerina needs in the West.
Y uiko:The training is never ending.My instructor is still training after30to40years，compared with her,I’m just nobody.There’s no such word as perfection.
Geisha do not marry,cut off from family bonds they live together,as if in sisterhood.They form clo friendships which bind them for life.Only one westerner has ever been allowed to become part of this clod way of life.It is now more than twenty years since Liza Dalby,a US citizen,lived in Japan as a geisha.
O kamisan:A blue-eyed girl playing the shamin,singing songs.It was the first time in geisha history.
She got better at walking,sitting on her knees and wearing the kimono,she gradually孕期怎么控制体重
became the part.
Liza had immaculate qualifications to become a geisha.She spent her teenage years in Japan,learning the language and the shamin--the traditional geisha instrument.She then went on to make the first ever study of geisha for her doctorate before becoming a geisha herlf.
L iza Dalby:I didn’t really stand out and then I would come and I’d sit next to someone and often he would start talking and then suddenly he’d kind of look at me you know notice that my
eyes were not deep brown and say,wait a minute you’re not Japane,what’s going on here?
And all the geisha would wait for that moment,I mean sometimes they did this on purpo,
恐龙涂色
they wouldn’t tell the customers that the foreign geisha was here and then someone would
notice and they would just break up,they thought that was so funny.Of cour,walking is
something that you have to give up the way that you walk when you’re wearing Western
clothes becau the kimono encas your legs rather tightly so you have to take smaller
steps,and I would always forget to do this especially if I was in a rush and then my feet
would start flapping and one of the older geisha would scold me not to walk that way,but
it’s like learning a whole new body language.When a woman enters the geisha community,
when she decides that she’s going to make this her life she makes a very conscious choice
that she’s not going to marry,that she’s not going to be a houwife,the roads really
diverge there,becau geisha don’t marry,they don’t follow the middle class way,they
deal in the world of prenting themlves as works of art.
They are works of art;but they are also rented by the hour to entertain men.
Arthur Golden:Even though a prostitute’s livelihood is x,and a geisha’s livelihood isn’t exactly x, the fact is that a prostitute can’t really determine who she is going to spend the next
别样的hour with and neither can a geisha’.
Artists by day,companions by night,the image of geisha has always been clouded by prostitution.From lowly beginning,geisha slowly ro in stature-until in time,they would reach the forefront of Japane society.Once sweethearts of samurai in the Second World War they waved goodbye to their kamikaze hero.How has the fragile world of the geisha retained status through400years of turbulent history?And what became of tho Geisha who believed they could escape their traditions and find true love in the west.To understand the geisha you have to know their past.Their story begins four centuries ago in the days of the Shogun.Geisha first appeared in th
e early1600’s.After centuries of infighting among rival warrior lords,Japan became a united country under a military dictator or Shogun.The government was t up in Edo,site of prent day Tokyo.Under Shogun rule,Japan isolated itlf entirely from the rest of the world for hundreds of years.The Shogun’s power was absolute.
Arthur Golden:One of the things that this government which was very impressive,did,was to stamp out,for example Christianity and another was to take all of the prostitution and that
kind of stuff and put it into restricted licend quarters to control it.
孟佳的微博The pleasure quarters became places of xual freedom.Exclusive prostitutes or courtesans would entertain samurai warriors and merchants at lavish banquets.It was here that the first geisha appeared. Surprisingly,they were men.They assumed the role of court jester.
L iza Dalby:The were entertainers who came into the parties that the courtesans had when they were entertaining customers at banquets,playing music,dancing,telling jokes,this kind of thing保护环境的口号
and the were originally men.
One prostitute’s list of clients was dwindling,in desperation,she t herlf up as the first female geis
ha. Soon female geisha outnumbered the men and then began to take the prostitute’s customers.
Arthur Golden:I think there must have been a great deal of rivalry between Geisha and prostitutes in tho early years in the pleasure quarters.The prostitutes of cour had the upper hand
